A cautionary tale about an all-consuming obsession:
“I can hear women’s legs talking to me, God help me.”
“In the course of time, legs developed a language of their own.
‘Youth,’ they said. ‘Pain and loss.’
‘Death,’ said the legs. ‘Forgotten pleasure.’
‘Forbidden,’ said the legs. ‘No through road.’
From stumbling over a few basic and clumsy phrases in the early days, I gradually became disturbingly fluent.
‘Yes,’ said the legs. ‘Your right of way.’”
“So funny, so absurd, so educational it is to be a man!”
First published in the Irish magazine ‘Grotesque’, this surreally erotic short story – set in the Montmartre quarter of Paris and in Berlin – describes what happens when women’s legs begin telling a muddled businessman stories.
Watched over by the spirit of Salvador Dalì, inadvertent attendance of a prayer meeting in Sacré-Cœur during a thunderstorm leads the protagonist to enlightenment, with devastating results.
Is the voice of a woman’s legs to be trusted – and are you hearing anything yet?
